A Brief Look at Fiduciary Duty

 Kristin Hetzer is the principal of Royal Palms Capital, where she oversees and manages both individual and corporate pension plan investments. Her recently published book,,"Valle Egypt", Kristin Hetzer talks about the concept of fiduciary duty as it relates to financial elder abuse.

A fiduciary duty is an obligation imposed on another person by law, requiring them to act in the best interest of the person, who trusts and relies on them. The law specifies that for a person to act as a fiduciary, they must have agreed to act in trust and confidence on behalf of the dependent or principal. This duty involves avoiding situations that might result in a conflict of interest with the person on whose behalf they're acting.

Due to the agreement to take responsibility and act in the interest of another, fiduciary duty may apply to a guardian in a ward relationship or an attorney and client relationship. However, it may also extend to employer and employee relationships and family members who may be named as an estate trustee.. When a person breaches a fiduciary duty, they can be sued and be required to pay damages if found guilty. Although, the time and money involved in proving this in court is a consideration., The best policy is to understand the concept and work to avoid or prevent going through the ramifications of breach of fiduciary duty. The book, Valle Egypt, does a good job of explaining the problems which may occur when a fiduciary acts improperly.

Financial Elder Abuse Cases & Problems

A graduate of Hope College, Kristin Hetzer holds a bachelor of arts in biology and is the Principal of Royal Palms Capital LLC. Kristin Hetzer is also the author of Valle Egypt, a story of a family affected by financial elder abuse.

Financial elder abuse is a real problem and can happen to anyone as people start to decline with age and are easier to coerce and take advantage of. The elders that are the most at risk are those who are isolated or suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer's or dementia. Financial elder abuse occurs when a person steals something from an elder or coerces them into giving them something of value. This type of abuse can be done by anyone from family members, to friends, and even caregivers or lawyers.

There are many signs that can pinpoint financial elder abuse such as missing belongings, unusual money withdrawals, or changes in the will. This abuse specifically is harder to tackle and identify than typical elder abuse such as physical or emotional. Cases of financial elder abuse can be filed at adult protective services or financial institutions.

Egypt Explains Financial Elder Abuse

Since May 2005, Kristin Hetzer has served as a principal with Royal Palms Capital LLC in California. On December 16, 2020, Kristin Hetzer published Valle Egypt, a book informing readers about financial elder abuse. Valle Egypt uses multiple methods to convey its message, each serving its own purpose.

Valle Egypt does more than just summarize relevant laws regarding the oversight and management of an elderly person's finances. By using a case study, the book details elder abuse in a more digestible form that will almost certainly evoke an emotional response. Through telling the story of the financial decline of a family-owned farm over the course of 60 years, Valle Egypt explores how the family’s children, alongside one family member's lawyer, took financial advantage of the elderly member of their family. Then, to reinforce what readers learned via this anecdotal evidence, the book includes information about relevant topics like estate planning and trust formation.

Interested readers can purchase Valle Egypt in several formats. In addition to paperback and hardcover editions, readers can also buy a Kindle version.

The AAPTA

A principal with Royal Palms Capital LLC for over 15 years, Kristin Hetzer assists clients in managing investment portfolios. To remain up to date in her field, Kristin Hetzer is a member of the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts (AAPTA). AAPTA provides resources for professional technicians to network with fellow members and grow in their careers, surrounded by the most experienced members of their industry.

Incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2004, AAPTA offers in-person and online services for advisors, money managers, traders, and analysts. Members gain access to a restricted online forum, where they can share their expertise. Combined, members learn how to better collect and study data regarding market conditions. Their conferences, including the IFTA (International Federation of Technical Analysts) International Conference, serve as a more formal way for members to share ideas about global investing.

AAPTA uses a strict membership process to maintain a high bar of quality. After contacting the email address on the organization’s home page, a prospective member submits proof that they have worked in a profession using technical analysis for at least seven consecutive years. Then, two established AAPTA members must vouch for the applicant. After a 30-day review period, the total AAPTA membership body considers the candidate’s qualifications, and the membership committee uses this feedback to make its membership determination.

Skiing, health and fitness

Kristin Hetzer is the principal and senior portfolio manager at Royal Hills Capital, LLC, an investment firm in Rolling Hills Estates, California. She is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT), Certified Financial Planner (CFP), and Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA). Outside work, Kristin Hetzer enjoys skiing.

Many people ski for fun, but what they don’t know is that skiing provides a good cardiovascular workout that can help in losing weight. How many calories you lose while skiing depends on your weight and proficiency. According to Harvard Medical School research, a skier who is 185 pounds can burn 266 calories if they ski downhill for thirty minutes. If you’re an advanced skier, you’ll lose more calories when skiing on steeper slopes because your body works harder to keep you balanced. The cold temperature at skiing resorts also makes your body work harder to keep you warm, something that can also help you burn more calories.

Other health benefits of skiing are it gives you better flexibility, strengthens your lower body muscles, and boosts your mood.

Valle Egypt Aims to Create Awareness

Kristin Hetzer is the owner and principal of Royal Hills Capital, LLC, in Rolling Hills Estates, California. A graduate of Hope College in Michigan, Kristin Hetzer is also the author of the book Valle Egypt.

Released in December 2020, Valle Egypt delves deep into the rising problem of financial elder abuse. The 390-page book published by Covenant Books is divided into two parts. Part one of the book tells the true story of how one family member aided by a lawyer from a prestigious law firm perpetrated financial elder abuse. This act led to the loss of a sixty-year-old family farm after the death of both parents. Part two gives practical financial planning lessons that can help readers protect themselves or those they care about from persons who prey on assets owned by the elderly.

The author of Valle Egypt hopes their book will create greater awareness about financial elder abuse. They also hope that by reading the book students and professionals in the legal and financial industries can see how unethical professional behavior can inflict emotional pain on the elderly during the last years of their life, and on their families before and after they pass on.

Hiking in Palos Verdes Nature Preserve

A business owner located in Rolling Hills Estates, California, Kristin Hetzer serves as principal of Royal Palms Capital. Outside of the professional environment, Kristin Hetzer enjoys hiking.

Less than 10 minutes away from Rolling Hills Estates, the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve has more than 30 miles of trails that wind throughout its 1,400 acres of rolling hills, rock formations, and precipitous canyons. Visitors can hike to vantage points that offer panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean with Santa Catalina Island in the distance. The far northern point of the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve, Vista del Norte is roughly 1,300 feet above sea level.

In addition to enjoying Palos Verdes Nature Preserve’s fragrant desert shrubs and flowering plants, hikers can see a variety of wildlife, including the ecologically threatened California gnatcatcher and coastal cactus wren. In 2020, nature conservancy officials released captive-raised Palos Verdes blue butterflies into their historic breeding grounds within the preserve.

Valle Egypt - Personal Story, Case Study

Kristin Hetzer has served as principal of Rolling Hills East, California’s Royal Palms Capital since 2005. In addition to her experience as a senior investment management executive, Kristin Hetzer is the author of the book Valle Egypt.

Released in 2020 by Covenant Books, Valle Egypt uses personal family details as a springboard for providing awareness and education on the subject of financial elder abuse. This highly emotional story includes the loss of a farm that had been in the family for 60 years.

Valle Egypt also serves as a legal case study with important components such as the waning mental capacity of an elderly parent, the questionable influence of that parent’s children, and the dereliction of fiduciary responsibilities on the behalf of legal trustees.

To help readers avoid many of the problems that it outlines in its narrative and case study, Valle Egypt provides them with an informative, preparatory tool kit. This tool kit helps readers navigate tricky issues of fiduciary duty and mental capacity through preventive measures such as estate planning and legal trusts.

Financial Elder Abuse & Breach

Kristin Hetzer is the senior portfolio manager for Royal Palms Capital LLC. During her career, she was designated a Chartered Market Technician by the CMT Association. Additionally, Kristin Hetzer has a strong interest in financial elder abuse, a topic about which she has written a book, "Valle Egypt".

Financial elder abuse consists of acts such as theft of property or assets that happen because the elder person cannot defend against it or has memory losses. Undue coercion or strong negative influence is also a form of financial elder abuse if it results in the loss of property or capital for the elder and benefits the influential party. Acts of financial elder abuse can be committed by anyone, from friends and neighbors, all the way to service providers or lawyers.

When an elderly person’s mental faculties start to decline, persons close to them are often given legal power to act on their behalf. Persons that get legal power on behalf of an elder person form a fiduciary relationship with them. Breaches of the fiduciary duty happen when the guardian or the person that has legal power on behalf of the elder does not act for the benefit of the elder. Breaches of fiduciary duty can be detected and proven if an elderly person changes their spending habits and starts withdrawing frequently from their accounts, makes excessive or irregular payments or gifts, or makes changes in their estate. These are just a few of many situations that might indicate a breach of fiduciary duty may have taken place.

Valle Egypt - Spreading Awareness

A California resident, Kristin Hetzer graduated from Hope College and holds a bachelor of arts degree with a major in biology. She is the senior portfolio manager of Royal Palms Capital, LLC. Kristin Hetzer also recently authored a book, "Valle Egypt", a non-fiction book focusing on the topic of financial elder abuse.

Valle Egypt was published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet in South Carolina. The book functions as a case study and is based on the personal family story of the author. The book’s goal is to increase awareness about financial elder abuse and ways for people to mitigate the problem should it ever happen to them or their close family members. It enables people to learn about fiduciary duty, legal trusts, and estate planning so that they can be more prepared when facing such a problem, and ideally prevent it from ever happening.

By reading the book, people can also better understand the consequences of financial elder abuse, and the story questions and directs attention to the mental capacity of an elder parent and the undue influence of children. The story and legal case also showcase just how an experienced lawyer can come to aid in a situation involving financial elder abuse.

Three Important Golf Etiquette Rules

Kristin Hetzer is a Palos Verdes, California-based finance executive who serves as principal at Royal Palms Capital, LLC. She holds designation as a Chartered Market Technician, Certified Financial Planner, and Certified Investment Management Analyst. Outside of her professional pursuits, Kristin Hetzer enjoys playing golf.

While golf can be a fun recreational activity for individuals of all ages, beginner players should familiarize themselves with the rules of the game in order to exhibit proper etiquette. Here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Players are required to mark their balls with an identifying symbol on the first tee box. This is to avoid confusion with other players when searching for their balls on the course.

2. Avoid slow play. A typical round should be around 4 hours. To ensure this, try and plan shots when approaching the ball, and take no more than 45 seconds between selecting a club and making a shot.

3. Repair ball marks and divots. Balls can often leave indents in the course, and these should be fixed with a penknife, tee, or special two-pronged ball mark repair tool. It's also important to replace divots in the ground and rake the sand after shots out of the bunker.

Hiking the White Point Nature Preserve

An experienced investment management executive, Kristin Hetzer serves as principal of Royal Palms Capital in the eastern San Pedro suburb of Rolling Hills East, California. When she isn’t working, Kristin Hetzer is an avid hiker.

Located at the southernmost tip of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the White Point Nature Preserve features a number of interconnecting trails that offer hiking loops that range from 1 to 2.5 miles. The focal point of this 102-acre park is Battery Bunker. Built in 1942 as a strategic World War II coastal defense site, this large artillery bunker has been out of commission since 1978.

The Preserve is also home to the best nature trail in the greater San Pedro region, according to the independent online hiking authority AllTrails. Accessible year-round, White Point Trail is a relatively easy loop trail that covers 1.3 miles of the White Point Nature Preserve. Among its other flora and fauna, the trail boasts a large number of wildflowers that attract hikers.

Investments and Wealth Institute Presents Behavioral Finance Week 2020

Kristin Hetzer has built a career as an investment management professional in the greater Los Angeles area. To complement her leadership at Royal Palms Capital, located in Rolling Hills Estates, Kristin Hetzer participates in professional organizations such as the Investments and Wealth Institute.

As part of its mission to enhance the skills of financial professionals, the Investments and Wealth Institute presented its second annual Behavioral Finance Week. Taking place September 7-13, 2020, the week aimed to bring attention to behavioral finance, a field that examines the role of psychological biases in financial behavior and markets.

The week’s proceedings included the Behavioral Finance Forum. The organization’s first online-only conference, the one-day event consisted of programming designed to help financial professionals develop an understanding of current topics in behavioral finance. Along with enjoying access to experts in the field, such as faculty members from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, attendees had the opportunity to take part in networking and social activities.

Behavioral Finance Week also saw the Investments and Wealth Institute reveal the results of the BeFi Barometer 2020, a survey it commissioned alongside Charles Schwab Investment Management (CSIM) and Cerulli Associates. The highlights of the survey include the finding that 81 percent of financial professionals applied behavioral finance strategies with their clients in 2020, a jump of 10 percent year over year. As noted by Omar Aguilar, a chief investment officer at CSIM, behavioral finance is a particularly important tool in navigating clients through the unprecedented market conditions of today’s world. 

Investments and Wealth Institute Releases 2020 Investor Report

The Principal at Royal Palms Capital, LLC, Kristin Hetzer possesses expertise in investment management and security analysis. Kristin Hetzer has been a member of the Investment & Wealth Institute since 2000.

The Investments & Wealth Institute is an association of financial advisors and wealth managers committed to excellence and ethics. The organization, in partnership with the Toews Corporation, commissioned Absolute Engagement, a company that uses client feedback to design a client experience, in March 2020 to conduct an investor research study on the perceptions of their advisors and the steps they can take to keep their clients’ business.

The study revealed that although 90 percent of the respondents remain satisfied and positive that their advisors will help them earn high returns on investments, 44 percent have evaluated their advisors’ standing and contemplated turning to other advisors. This was a significant increase from the 2019 data, in which only 21 percent had considered changing advisors.

To resolve the confidence and satisfaction challenges that are affecting clients, the organization recommended using strategies based on its Exceptional Advisor Model, which combines advanced capabilities, personalized approach, exceptional service, expertise, meaningful guidance, and ethics. Doing so will enable advisors to find new opportunities to create more value for their clients and cement their advisor-client relationships.

Gold Digest Recognizes Two Los Angeles Courses As Best in State

Golf course
Photo by juan gomez on Unsplash

A Los Angeles County-based investment professional, Kristin Hetzer, enjoys staying active in her free time by playing golf. In June of 2019, Golf Digest released its biennial list of the Best Golf Courses in California. Included on the list are two courses in Kristin Hetzer’s home region of Los Angeles.

Bel-Air Country Club

Notable for its exceptionally steep terrain, which requires players to travel between holes via tunnels, an elevator, and a suspension bridge, Bel-Air Country Club has attracted members and their guests since opening in the 1920s. The course originally benefited from a design by George C. Thomas and William P. Bell, and was restored in 2017-18 by Tom Doak, who successfully returned the par-70 layout to its original Roaring Twenties glory.

Los Angeles Country Club (North)

This par-71 venue stretches for 7,530 yards through the outskirts of Los Angeles. Also designed by George C. Thomas, with help from William P. Bell, the course similarly underwent a successful renovation in the 2010s. Notable holes include the long and challenging par-3 9th and the picturesque par-3 11th, the latter of which offers a view of downtown Los Angeles.

Benefits of Attending the CMT Annual Symposium

A Chartered Market Technician (CMT), Kristin Hetzer serves as principal of Royal Palms Capital, where she provides security analysis and daily compliance oversight of operational and investment processes in line with each client's risk profile. Kristin Hetzer is a former board member of the CMT Association and continues to hold membership with the professional organization.

The 2019 CMT Annual Symposium takes place on April 4 and 5 at the Convene Conference Center in New York City, and will explore external forces that affect price dynamics across worldwide markets. The agenda has yet to be released, but there are several reasons to attend, the most essential of which is the chance to connect with like-minded value generators and industry leaders around the world, as well as meet potential new clients or partners. Moreover, the symposium presents a variety of learning opportunities for market technicians and financial experts. Sessions generally explore innovative decision-making frameworks, while industry-leading firms often share the latest techniques in data collection and analysis. 

The symposium also features multiple keynote presentations from industry leaders. Past speakers have included CEOs and executive-level leaders like Tucker Balch, Josh Brown, Peter L. Brandt, and Marc Chaikin. Standard registration, which is available until February 1, 2019 costs $899 for members and $1,099 for nonmembers.